Bestselling books in new, compact formats
With the New Year there is a lot to catch up on. There has been an abundance of fabulous books made available in a more portable format over the past couple of months. So if you missed them on initial release or you're a bit more budget-conscious, especially at this time of year, here's a selection to tempt you!
Cult Classic by Sloane Crosley
One night in New York City's Chinatown, Lola is at a dinner with former colleagues when she excuses herself to buy a pack of cigarettes. On her way back, she runs into a former boyfriend. The next night, she runs into another ex. And then... another. The city has become awash with ghosts of heartbreaks past.
What might have passed for coincidence becomes something far stranger when the recently engaged Lola must contend not only with the viability of her current relationship, but the fact that her best friend and her former boss - a magazine editor turned mystical guru – might have an unhealthy investment in its outcome. As memories of the past swirl and converge, Lola is forced to decide if she will surrender herself to the conspirings of one very contemporary cult.
You Made a Fool of Death With Your Beauty by Akwaeke Emezi
It’s the opportunity of a lifetime:
Feyi is about to be given the chance to escape the City’s blistering heat for a dream island holiday: poolside cocktails, beach sunsets, and elaborate meals. And as the sun goes down on her old life our heroine also might just be ready to open her heart to someone new.
The only problem is, she’s falling for the one man she absolutely can’t have.
Either/Or by Elif Batuman
Selin is the luckiest person in her family: The only one who was born in America and got to go to Harvard. Now it’s her second year, 1996, and Selin knows she has to make it count. The first order of business: to figure out the meaning of everything that happened over the summer. Why did Selin’s elusive crush, Ivan, find her that job in the Hungarian countryside? What was up with all those other people in the Hungarian countryside? Why is Ivan’s ex-girlfriend now trying to get in touch with her?
On the plus side, her life feels like the plot of an exciting novel. On the other hand, why do so many novels have crazy, abandoned women in them? How does one live a life as interesting as a novel without becoming a crazy, abandoned woman oneself?
Ghost Lover by Lisa Taddeo
Behind anonymous screens, an army of cool and beautiful girls manage the dating service Ghost Lover, a forwarding system for text messages that promises to spare you the anguish of trying to stay composed while communicating with your crush.
At a star-studded political fundraiser in a Los Angeles mansion, a trio of women compete to win the heart of the slick guest of honour.
In a tense hospital waiting room, an inseparable pair of hard-partying friends crash into life's responsibilities, but the magic of their glory days comes alive again at the moment they least expect it.
In these nine riveting stories, Lisa Taddeo brings to life the fever of obsession, the blindness of love and the mania of grief.
The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka
Colombo, 1990. Maali Almeida, war photographer, gambler and closet queen, has woken up dead in what seems like a celestial visa office. His dismembered body is sinking in the serene Beira lake and he has no idea who killed him.
At a time where scores are settled by death squads, suicide bombers and hired goons, the list of suspects is depressingly long, as the ghouls and ghosts with grudges who cluster round can attest. But even in the afterlife, time is running out for Maali. He has seven moons to try and contact the man and woman he loves most and lead them to a hidden cache of photos that will rock Sri Lanka.
Salonika Burning by Gail Jones
Macedonia, 1917. The great city of Salonika is engulfed by fire as all of Europe is ravaged by war.
Amid the destruction are those who have come to the frontlines to heal - surgeons, ambulance drivers, nurses, orderlies and other volunteers. Four of them – Stella, Olive, Grace and Stanley - are at the centre of Gail Jones's extraordinary new novel, which takes its inspiration from the wartime experiences of Australians Miles Franklin and Olive King, and British painters Grace Pailthorpe and Stanley Spencer. In Jones's imagination these four lives intertwine and change, each compelled by the desire to create something meaningful in the ruins of a broken world.
The Rabbit Hutch by Tess Gunty
Welcome to The Rabbit Hutch.
An online obituary writer. A young mother with a secret. A woman waging a solo campaign against rodents. Separated by the thin walls of The Rabbit Hutch, a low-cost housing complex in the run-down Indiana town of Vacca Vale, these individual lives unfold.
But Blandine isn't like the other residents of her building. Ethereally beautiful and formidably intelligent, she spends her hours reading Dante and dreaming about becoming a female mystic.
Until, that is, three sweltering days in July culminate in an act of violence that will change everything, and finally offer her a chance to escape.
Bodies of Light by Jennifer Down
So by the grace of a photograph that had inexplicably gone viral, Tony had found me. Or - he’d found Maggie. I had no way of knowing whether he was nuts or not; whether he might go to the cops. Maybe that sounds paranoid, but I don’t think it’s so ridiculous. People have gone to prison for much lesser things than accusations of child-killing.
A quiet, small-town existence. An unexpected Facebook message, jolting her back to the past. A history she’s reluctant to revisit – dark memories and unspoken trauma, warning knocks on bedroom walls, unfathomable loss.
She became a new person a long time ago. What happens when buried stories are dragged into the light?
Lenny Marks Gets Away With Murder by Kerryn Mayne
Lenny Marks is good at not remembering. She has spent the last twenty years not thinking about the day her mother left her when she was still a child. Her stepfather's parting words, however, remain annoyingly unforgettable: 'You did this.' Now thirty-seven, Lenny prefers contentment and order over the unreliability of happiness and the messiness of relationships. She fills her days teaching at the local primary school, and her nights playing Scrabble with her pretend housemate, watching reruns of Friends and rearranging her thirty-six copies of The Hobbit.
Recently though, if only to appease her beloved foster-mum, Lenny has set herself the goal of 'getting a life'. Then, out of the blue, a letter arrives from the Adult Parole Board. And when her desperate attempts to ignore it fail, Lenny starts to unravel. Worse, she starts to remember . . .
The Book of Goose by Yiyun Li
A propulsive, seductive new novel about friendship, exploitation and intimacy from the prize-winning author of Where Reasons End.
Fabienne is dead. Her childhood best friend, Agnès, receives the news in America, far from the French countryside where the two girls were raised – the place that Fabienne helped Agnès escape ten years ago. Now, Agnès is free to tell her story.
As children in a backwater town, they’d built a private world, invisible to everyone but themselves – until Fabienne hatched the plan that would change everything, launching Agnès on an epic trajectory through fame, fortune, and terrible loss.
A Brief Affair by Alex Miller
On the face of it, Dr Frances Egan is a woman who has it all – a loving family and a fine career – until a brief, perfect affair reveals to her an imaginative dimension to her life that is wholly her own.
Fran finds the courage and the inspiration to risk everything and change her direction at the age of forty-two. This newfound understanding of herself is fortified by the discovery of a long-forgotten diary from the asylum and the story it reveals.
Written with humour, sensitivity and the wisdom for which Miller's work is famous, this exquisitely compassionate novel explores the interior life and the dangerous navigation of love in all its forms.
She and Her Cat by Makoto Shinkai translated by Naruki Nagakawa & Ginny Tapley Takemori
On the outskirts of Tokyo, local cats weave their way through the lives and homes of their owners as they navigate difficult times.
A cat named Chobi sends silent messages of courage to a young woman, willing her to end a faltering relationship. A gifted artist fatally misunderstands her boss's enthusiasm for her paintings. A manga fan shuts herself away after the death of her friend, while her cat Cookie hatches a plan to persuade her outside. A woman who has dedicated her life to a distant husband learns a lesson in independence from her cat.
Against the urban backdrop of humming trains and private woes, She and Her Cat explores the gentle magic of the everyday.
